Winning human trafficking war in Abia
By Uche Nwosu Correspondent, Umuahia

For sometime now, the issue of child labour has been a disturbing phenomenon in the Nigerian society. The issue is so worrisome that the government, with the collaboration of some non-governmental organisations (NGO) and the National Agency for Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP), has taken steps to arrest the situation.

But as it stands now, some children from poor homes are still subjected to inhuman treatment, as they are made to hawk wares at odd hours and during the periods they ought to be in school. Some are also compelled by their mistresses to work into the wee hours of the day as against what their body mechanism could accommodate.


Ironically, these children are often times deceived into joining the malevolent individuals or child traffickers on the pretext that they would be offered good education or trained in skills or trade by them. But as soon as they disappear out of the sight of their parents, an entirely new tune begins. The promises are thrown to the winds while child begins to suffer. They are either forced into the streets to hawk wares or made to do manual jobs at homes for countless hours without rest. Some girls are even forced into prostitution by their mistresses, who collect the money they make out of it and refuse to even treat them when they are sick.


In the South East, particularly in Abia State, where it is almost a tradition for parents who cannot afford basic education for their children to ask them to learn one trade or the other, this issue appears to be taking a dangerous trend as some children from these states are ferried into different countries without their parents monitoring their progress. Most of them don’t even return to tell their stories.


It is for these and other reasons that the state government has taken action to stem the trend by directing law enforcement agencies to watch out for and arrest perpetrators of such acts.


Recently, the police arrested a lady who could not account for 37 children found in her custody in Osisioma Local Government Area of the state. Aged between one and 14, the children were recovered from an illegal children home at Osisioma near Aba. Acting on a tip-off, officers and men of the Zone 9 Police Command led by the Deputy Inspector-General of Police (DIG), Yakubu Mohammed, stormed the home.


The home, which had been operating for about three years in the care of one Emmanuela Ude, is reportedly owned by one Rev. Joy Ugwueze, now at large.


Nobody could say what the operators of the home had done with the numerous children they had gathered from nearby states like Akwa Ibom, Cross River, and Bayelsa. But what Emmanuela claimed that her madam, Rev. Ugwueze, sold the children to unknown persons.


She also confessed to the police that children were also brought there from the Republic of Cameroon by her boss and proprietor of the home while she saw to the day-to-day care of the children before they are sold.


Mohammed said at a press briefing that police investigation has shown that the children were taken from their parents, some of them at tender ages, adding that majority of them could not locate their homes any more except the No. 20 Adaelu Street in Osisioma where they are harboured.


The police boss said Emmanuela also confessed that the home is being run under the auspicious of an outreach ministry and that it was serving as a collecting point for children from other parts of the country and beyond. Emmanuela, he informed, could not give any satisfactory account of how the teenagers come to the home but that she admitted that they were brought from those states.


His words: "Emmanuela who takes care and custody of the children confessed that the proprietor, Joy Ugwueze, gives out the children to prospective buyers for purposes of unlawful, adoption and other sinister purposes."


The AIG however journalists that the children would be handed over to the Enugu zonal headquarters of the NAPTIP.


Meanwhile, other arrests concerning trafficking of children and women were also made by the command. According to Mohammed, one Silas Asuoluka Okoye alias Alhaji and his female accomplice, Nyeneme Oku, were arrested along Umuahia/Ikot-Ekpene road by police detectives with two-day-old twins. The twins, he said, are a boy and a girl.


Shockingly, the umbilical cords of these babies were yet to fall at the time of arrest, prompting suspicion that they may have been abducted shortly after delivery.


"On interrogation, the duo confessed to have bought the twins from one Mrs. Grace James of Ikot Ntien Nsit, Uyo in Akwa Ibom State, who runs a maternity home and is now in police net helping us in further investigation," he stressed, adding that Okoye and Oku have been in the human trafficking business for long. Their base, he said, is Umuoji village in Idemili North LGA of Anambra state.


The police boss stated that the human traffickers sell the babies at prices ranging from N70,000 to N150,000 to prospective buyers.

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